Scribble Doodle Bleed: Screwdriver
This week’s word was screwdriver, which immediately required clarification because… are we talking about vodka and orange juice or the thing you keep in a junk drawer that may or may not actually be there when you need it? We didn’t have one on hand, which both felt very wrong but also very on brand.
We clinked imaginary glasses. There was brief Googling. There was a small historical detour about oil workers stirring drinks with actual tools, which may or may not be true but we accepted it because its fun and why not?
From there it split in two and then somehow became the same thing.
Leah’s piece unfolded behind a bar, where a perfectly pleasant older woman orders an espresso martini and her husband walks past the menu, past the signs, past the gentle cues of how this works, and asks for a screwdriver. Which of course can be made. Obviously it can be made. That’s not the point. The point is the tiny flare of irritation, the internal monologue that spirals into ego and aging and the fantasy of slipping a literal screwdriver into the drywall of the afternoon and turning until the room loosens. It’s about listening. It’s about control. It’s about how sometimes you want to follow the menu because the menu is what’s keeping everything from wobbling.
And then Michelle read You Are Sunlight in a Glass, which took the same word and made it tender. Suddenly the screwdriver wasn’t abrasive at all. It was steady. It was quiet usefulness. It was the thing that doesn’t get applause but keeps the shelf upright. Oranges surrendering their brightness. Noon arriving without its shoes on. By the time the plates are cleared, “the day has been unscrewed.”
We wandered into butter-on-ham-sandwich debates, craft breweries multiplying and collapsing, Dobby losing his head mid-episode, and then veered into Exquisite Corpse and folded-paper chaos and platypuses and detached toes and existential limbo and somehow that all made sense too.
That’s kind of the rhythm of it. We start with a word. We follow it. It tightens something. It loosens something. It turns out to be more than hardware and more than a drink. It turns out to be whatever we’re carrying that week.
Next week’s word(s) is (are) Pirate & Funk, which is sure to be entertaining.
If you made something inspired by screwdriver — writing, drawing, anything strange and small — send it to us. We love seeing where the word takes you.
If you have any words you’d like us to do, send those to us to! We’ll either do them right out or we will throw them in the jar(s)!
Cheers,
Michelle & Leah
Michelle’s:
Leah’s:
“I’ll have an espresso martini,” says the sweet older woman with the short white bob and rosy cheeks. She wears a floral silk blouse riddled with color, and her ears are adorned the same way, flowers streaming down from sagging lobes. She is a delight. She’s come for a treat. She’s come to experience life while she still holds it in her hand, gently, like a baby bird.
Her husband walks up behind her. He’s been “perusing.” Walked right past me the moment they came in. Walked past her, even. Ignored all the signs. Ignored the other folks in line. He walks in with his shoulders pulled tightly back, his nipples pressing through his shirt. The loose skin at his collarbone hangs forward. Tufts of white-gray hair poke out above it.
“And I’ll have a screwdriver.” He leans onto the counter, smirks.
“I’m sorry, we don’t make those,” I say, out of spite, because the old man wasn’t paying attention when I gestured to my small morning menu, making pleasant conversation with his bubbly wife. His bubbly wife who was now horribly embarassed.
Of course I can make a screwdriver. I can also make a White Russian or a skinny margarita. But I don’t want to.
Because they’re not on the goddamned menu. And I told them what was on the menu.
So maybe the better idea is for you to go back to kindergarten and relearn what it means to listen to instructions, to read directions thoroughly before proceeding.
His balding white head makes me angry.
The way he stares past me at the glass wall behind the bar, scanning his own reflection floating between liquor bottles.
He tries ignoring himself. Succeeds in ignoring me.
He studies the whiskey like it’s an exhibit. Like he understands oak and smoke and burn. Like his tongue remembers anything at all.
He doesn’t want whiskey. He doesn’t want mezcal. He doesn’t want Japanese rye.
He wants surprise.
He wants youth.
But he can’t have those.
Because he has a need, and that need is for something assembled simply enough that he doesn’t have to think at all.
He’s had too much time to think.
A screwdriver.
The idea is a screw in his head already, twisted in so tight the surface is stripped smooth. The threads are worn. The metal is rusted. He’s been trying to turn it deeper for years, turning and turning until he can find the part of his brain that will shut it off for good.
Vodka and orange juice.
A tool disguised as breakfast for a tool.
I imagine slipping a screwdriver into the soft drywall of the afternoon instead. Turning it slowly. Feeling the room loosen around its screws. The lights sag. The bottles tilt. The old man leaks into the floor like pulp.
Instead, I reach for the vodka.
